A master-slave monitor contains at least one transceiver. A transceiver contains the two basic components: a receiver and a transmitter pair. The receiver and transmitter pair can interface to a medium such as space (or the distance between two locations) either wirelessly, wired, by light, or by sound. One type of master-slave monitor interfaces incoming and outgoing sounds to outgoing and incoming wireless signals, respectively. An antenna provides the wireless interface to insert and extract the wireless signal to/from space. A speaker and microphone are added to the other end to insert and extract the sounds to/from space. This type of master-slave monitor has two transceivers: an audio transceiver on the sound side and a wireless transceiver on the wireless side. Together these electrical components extract an audio signal from space, translate the audio signal to an electrical audio signal, modulate a carrier wave with the audio signal, amplify the signal, transmit the signal into free space, detect the signal using an antenna, amplify the signal, de-modulate the audio signal from the carrier wave and translate the electrical audio signal to an audio signal by a speaker. The signal is provided to/from humans by the use of a speaker and microphone who perceive the contents of the audio signal. A baseband processor at each end can further manipulate the signal. The first master-slave monitor is at one location while two or more master-slave monitors are at other locations. These locations are usually far enough apart and separated by obstacles such that a person at the one location cannot typically be heard by a person in the other location using an unassisted voice, an electrical system is used to allow communication.
A baby monitor provides an uni-directional interconnect. A new baby or infant cries out to indicate to their parents that the infant requires attention. A baby or infant monitoring system is typically used within the confines of the home to monitor the infant in the nursery while the parent is in a different distant room. The basic monitoring system as indicated above includes a transmitter and a receiver. The monitoring system allows a parent to place a sleeping infant into a crib of a nursery with the transmitter and monitor the sounds within the nursery while physically in a different room with the receiver. Whenever the infant starts to cry, the transmitter sends the infant's cries to the receiver in the different room to notify the parent that the infant is in need of attention. An infant or baby monitoring system allows a parent to listen in to the sound in a nursery containing the transmitter and respond to the infant's needs as if the parent were in the nursery.
One of the difficulties of the parent-infant monitor is that as the parent moves around the home, the receiver that listens to the baby remains in one room. The infant cannot be properly monitored when the parent moves out of the room that has the receiver. Often, the parent removes the receiver and transports it to the new location.
Another concern of the parent-infant monitor is that the parent when leaving the new location forgets to take the receiver with them. Now the parent will hear no sounds and thinks the baby is sleeping
Another concern of the parent-infant monitor is that the parent would like a private moment but the parent-infant monitor needs to be physically turned off. If the transmitter is disabled, the remaining monitors generate large levels of noise. In this case, all monitors need to be visited and disabled. This condition opens the possibility to forget to enable the parent-infant monitor system. Now the parent will hear no sounds and thinks the baby is sleeping.
Another concern is power dissipation of the monitors in the home. By disabling those units at the various nodes, power dissipation is reduced. In the master-slave monitoring system incorporating a fully enabled transceiver in both the master and slave monitors is that a physical switch needs to be depressed or held as the system is utilized. For example, when person A wants to speak to person B, the talk button is depressed on the nearest transceiver. Another issue is that the voice of the user is sent to all rooms, the message disturbs those who are not interested.
Locating an individual in a room is difficult to do when the individual is not wearing an electronic locating unit. The electronic locating unit provides feedback regarding its current position. However, the object needs to be worn, requires batteries and must also be remembered to be worn. These conditions open the possibility for forgetting to wear it or letting the battery die out. This prevents the ability to locate the individual.
A person who has hearing loss and does not wear any ear aids may need to turn up the volume of electronic equipment such as a TV, radio, stereo, or internet browsing. The increased dB of sound disturbs others or wakes up a sleeping baby. One compromising solution is to turn off the electronic equipment and wait till the sleeping baby awakes or the others have left.